Mt Group [Logan, Cliodhna, Cathal, Jack, Kaitlin, Tori and me] gathered together to start thinking about pitching 3 different game ideas that had to relate to the theme unstable. Sadly for my group, there’s a very large lack of communication from the games people while animation people were asking about them for what type of game they’re interested in making, they all said they don’t mind. I’m not sure if the games people just don’t usually work in groups or that they’re awkward in general but hopefully with time we can manage some type of team work.

The ideas we presented was Dragon invading a town, Airplane drop and a Stealth game avoiding monsters. All of which did not relate to unstable and the gameplay in general was not interesting. I had to ask my group to prepare a new game pitch for Thursday. This is what I have:

In the end of the day, I only got Tori’s pitch so I sent them to Mike asking if these ideas were good to work around. His response is that they’re ‘ok’ and Tori’s idea would have to be polished a bit more.

At this point seeing my peers from animation in other groups getting a lot more work done together really brought my mood down on the amount of work my team is doing, instead of stressing myself over it too much I decided to keep moving at my pace unless someone in my group says something. I’m hoping we can get at least some roles handed out and a presentation started for week 3 set up (it did not happen).

In week 2, the games side had change the whole game without giving us any update or discussing the UI design. At least knowing that the game is about and what kind of characters and assets they need, we can go forward into designing that for them.

ART STYLE RESEARCH

To begin finding our own style, we decided to look into already existing games and art to see how their style choice help push the narratives of the game. Instead of looking to 3 similar art styles, we decided to look into very different works so that we can also see what to avoid in our style if we don’t want to lean into a genre.

GRAVITY FALLS

Target audience– TVY7 (7 and up) but is more geared towards older audiences, such as tweens and teens.
Key influences :

The Simpsons – the circular eyes and nose sticking out in between them. Also the large variations of body shapes and head shapes.

Calarts Art style – easy to animate art style but also since most shows use this kind of art style that is targeted to kids-young adults, it feels somewhat familiar.

Adventure time and regular show (which were airing at the same time) – they have lanky limbs and the hands for main characters have 3 fingers (why do people in Gravity falls have 4, 5 or 6 fingers?) and their side characters/background characters are the same such as soos and ice king being roundish.
What mood is it trying to convey through its art style? Misleading ( Looks like a kids cartoon but show is kinda dark), Comedic/light-hearted with the animation and the anatomy bends in the style.
Describe how you think the art compliments the storytelling in the piece – Misleading : art style is cheery in contrast to the storytelling/plot, it just seems like a very boring story of siblings leaving home in summer since their parents don’t want to deal with them but they end up going on adventures and finding whacky creatures. The very friendly style doesn’t really introduce much of the story in the beginning so it throws the audience off when there’s backstory with plot twists. Backgrounds are quite muted which help showcase that the characters are in a rather boring and empty place.
What does this piece do better than similar pieces? What does it do worse? They have a better believable setting that is easy to get immersed in when compared to shows like Adventure time which was airing around the same time.
Come up with 3 Rules for this art style:

Round eyes that are always stuck together and
connected to the nose, use circular/ rounded shapes for the head and faces, avoid sharp
edges; make them rounded.

KLAUS

Targets audience – Aged 7 and Up, Families, can be enjoyed by all but most aimed towards a younger audience
Key influences :

Despicable me – Very exaggerated spots in the design such as Jesper having a big round nose in contrast to his very rectangular shapes, Gru from despicable has a sharp nose while he is mainly very roundish.

Kids Story Books – In general looking at the style it feels familiar to the books I’ve looked into when I was small, very extreme with shape language and minimal use of heavy black outline.

“The Paperman” which was released in 2012 by Disney – The animation where it was mainly animated in 2D but gives off a 3D effect with the shading.
What mood is it trying to convey through its art style? Uplifting, Comfy, Cozy, from the lighting and atmosphere; it showcases that they are in a small town which they are.
Describe how you think the art compliments the storytelling in the piece – The shapes and designs of the townspeople help make Klaus look friendly and kinder in comparison. They heavily pushed the shape language in the character designs.
What does this piece do better than similar pieces? What does it do worse? When compared to Song Of the Sea, Klaus used lighting better to capture emotions and push the narratives. Klaus also has a wide variety of body shapes when compared to Song of the sea which only has a few. I personally think that their use of lighting and colours really bring out the emotions in comparison to Gravity Falls which show the emotions through the characters face itself.
Come up with 3 Rules for this art style –

Lots of contrast in anatomy; big bodies/small limbs
long bodies/lanky skinny limbs
Play with shape language
Use airbrush to break designs in similar colour or very thin line
No thick outline

When looking into the style, the official studio had created their own page on how to draw Jesper like some type of art guide : https://www.iamag.co/how-to-draw-jesper-from-klaus/

So when creating my own art guide I could reference to this and take some inspirations. The main thing I like is using very few works but if there are words there’s a lot of arrows to indicate what main areas they’re talking about with little ticks and xs.

DON’T STARVE

Targets audience – 13+, older audiences
Key influences :

Tim Burton – The pale complexion of the playable characters, most living things in the game have very empty soulless like eyes where you can’t tell if it’s aggressive or passive. Characters also having extremely weird wild hair styles.

Expressionism (Art Movement e.g The Scream) – artistic style where the artist draws base on their emotion than what is reality such as strange looking creatures and exaggerated features. Similar to the creatures in the game at night. Also the use of lines for certain textures for the background.
What mood is it trying to convey through its art style? Spooky, Scary, Dark, Dreary, Vintage. It feels like some kind of doodle you’d do on a scrap piece of paper.
Describe how you think the art compliments the storytelling in the piece– the art compliments the time where the game takes place (1910-ish), it’s like watching old videos from that time, character style is more related to modern times. The character designs all look rather ghoulish and frail which sets the tone of the game which is about surviving in the dark.
What does this piece do better than similar pieces? What does it do worse? When compared to “our darker purpose”, dont starve has limited body variation and doesn’t play with shapes as much. Don’t Starve however, captures textures better through their linework

Come up with 3 Rules for this art style –

Extremely large head : head double the size of the body
Sharp points : avoid very round edges but for head shapes
Very simple designs with lanky links
Dull colours : to shade in black scribble over the area

DEVELOPING STYLE

From the research, we had a rough idea that we wanted to lean into the Wacky Animation style since our game was suppose to be slightly comedic, light-hearted and casual. We also wanted 2.5D in the game so I also looked into some of those and see what style they used. Seeing how different the style is from what I’m use to, I’ll be out of my comfort zone and trying to do a style that me and Kaitlin can roughly work on.

LOOKING INTO WHACKY ANIMATION

After looking into the whacky animation style of anatomy and linework, I did some art style choices that we can look into and select what areas we like to combine together for an ‘ultimate’ style but really I didn’t get much feedback but everyone enjoyed the second art style. I had also asked people outside of this project for feedback that play games and had also suggested that style 2 tickled their brain.

Since it includes fish people. I of course had to draw some fish in the similar art style as the anatomy is a lot more different which will then be included in the art guide ☻